Tactical staff scheduling analysis for hospital ancillary units.

Hospital ancillary units face difficult staffing problems due to demand variability by time of day and day of week. For such problems, tour scheduling models play an important role in minimizing labor cost while meeting the staffing needs and personnel scheduling constraints of the unit. We describe an approach called tactical scheduling analysis for addressing such problems. The components of such an analysis are detailed and several actual scheduling analysis projects are presented in order to give a sense of the different types of problems faced by ancillary units and how we as engineers try to solve these problems.